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If you were reading the papers or listen-ing to CBC radio in the past week, you

may have caught the results of a recent and remarkable study on the migration of song-birds. Researchers at CBC York University were able to attach small microchips to the back of songbirds to chart the distance and characteristics of their migratory patterns.

What they found was truly unbelievable. It turns out that the relatively small birds were flying over 500 kilometres a day and doing it several days in a row in order to reach their wintering grounds in South America. As if this wasn’t amazing enough, the birds did the trip even faster on their return home in a mad dash to outrace others of their species back to their breeding grounds. The extra urgency can

be attributed to the life and death struggle to stake out the best territories and find mates in the small window of time that they have in order to produce offspring mature enough to make the same trip the next year.

Migration of birds has long been one of the great mysteries of science. How these crea-tures manage to navigate thousands of kilo-metres year after year ending up in essentially the same place at pretty much the same time is hard to understand. When you consider

the small size of even the biggest songbird, how they have the energy and stamina to make the trip is almost beyond comprehension.

The rise and fall of the amazing songbird

By Glen Hodgson

Ecocentric

continued on page 9B

BY EVAN FRENCH

When the federal government passed its budget on Feb. 6, some of the proposed

changes to the Navigable Waters Protection Act (NWPA) concerned Wendy Grater. The director of Black Feather, a local wilderness adventure company, said she's worried the changes would reduce the number of public waterways in the country.

"Well I think it's a real disappointment actually," she said. "I think, as an outdoor enthusiast, or anyone who cares about Cana-da's heritage and rivers and lakes, it's a real step backwards."

The proposed amendments to the Act would create a "tiered" or "class system" for Canadian waterways, granting the gov-ernment discretionary authority to identify waterways deemed worthy and unworthy of federal protection. Critics say the amend-ments would affect the protection of, and right of access to, Canada's waterways.

Grater said she's e-mailed Parry Sound - Muskoka MP Tony Clement to get more information, and she isn't satisfied with the answers she got.

"The Conservative view is that it's an important and essential thing to do to allow infrastructure projects, such as dams and bridges, to be built without having to go through the environtmental hoops, but I think it's very short-sighted," she said. "Hav-ing those environmental protections in place will ensure that we will have an economy in the future."

She said the amendment would change the definition of a navigable waterway. In the past, a navigable waterway was considered

to be anything you could paddle down in a canoe. Now, only waterways which allow the passage of vessels with a draft of one meter will fall under the protection of the NWPA.

"You look at something like the Magne-tawan or the French (rivers) and at places they certainly couldn't take a craft one meter in depth, so that means none of those are actually navigable waterways," said Grater.

She said although she doesn't believe dams or bridges will necessarily be built on those waterways, under the amendments it would be a possibility.

Eric Collard, a spokesperson for Transport Canada, said in an e-mail that the proposed changes will address shortcomings in the current Act that have had an impact on indus-try and provincial infrastructure projects.

He said around 2,500 Canadians apply for approval to construct a project in, on, or above waterways and the changes will help the gov-ernment be more responsive to the needs of those people. The legislation would establish defined 'classes of waters' not suitable for navigation, such as irrigation and drainage ditches, and 'classes of works' which pose no concern to ongoing navigational safety, and those classes would be exempt from the approval requirements of the NWPA.

"Modernizing the NWPA will make the act more efficient for the thousands of Canadi-ans who require approval of their projects," Collard said.

But for people like Grater, the changes present a dilemma.

As a tour operator, she said the changes could hurt business. Tour groups rely on the presence of pristine public waterways

to make money and, Grater said, under the changes, they might not be able to do that as they have in the past.

"Traditional portages and camping sites were considered, under the previous act, to be able to be used by the public as they go

through," she said. "Whereas with this, with them not being considering public water-ways, then it means the private landowner would potentially own that body of water as well."

Proposed changes could reduce number of public waterways

Canoeists enjoy paddling on Georgian Bay, near Wreck Island.Cody Storm Cooper photo

Friday, February 20, 20094B - LIFESTYLES THIS WEEK